By rights, this should be a national day of mourning. EastEnders has got a new executive producer – Bryan Kirkwood – and, as executive producers so often do, he's decided to spend his first few days hiding in a bush, taking out several characters with a poisoned blowpipe.

This weekend it emerged that six EastEnders characters are to get the chop. Some of them are played by talented actors, such as Libby Fox (Belinda Owusu). Some of them are long-standing and beloved, like Charlie Slater and Minty. And some of them ... well, OK, some of them were dazzlingly pointless to begin with, such as Danny Mitchell and Adam Best. The fact that you've just Googled "Adam Best" proves this point precisely.

The six are being done away with to make way for the return of Shane Richie and Jessie Wallace, who'll be reprising their roles as Alfie Moon and Kat Slater – at least until Shane Richie gets too big for his boots again, and leaves to chase a career in the movies again, and then ends up glumly hosting a horrible karaoke-themed gameshow on Sky again.

But this sudden EastEnders cast cull seems like a tremendously bad idea. Not just because it heralds the imminent arrival of several new scenes involving Alfie Moon full-stop. No, this seems like a bad idea because there are so many other EastEnders characters who deserved to be killed off first.

But maybe it's not too late. Maybe, while Kirkwood still has his scythe out, we can convince him to ditch some of the other dead wood that's clogging EastEnders up. Here are my favourite contenders for the chop:

Fatboy – Albert Square's very own Jar-Jar Binks

A wodge of irritating comic relief introduced during the recent E20 online drama, who is yet to serve a purpose other than making me genuinely dislike young people, Fatboy appears to be contractually obliged to shout the word "blood" at people 15 times an episode and occasionally drive an ice cream van around in circles singing 50 Cent songs for no reason whatsoever. He must go, preferably in a scene where he falls down the world's largest flight of stairs.

Peter Beale – The unnecessary son of Ian Beale

He needs to be written out of EastEnders before his increasingly spectacular haircut goes power mad and starts to colonise the entire set. Also, his voice has been breaking for what seems like seven full years, so he could probably use his new-found free time to consult a doctor or something.

Billie shouldn't be written out of EastEnders because he's a bad character as such, but because his presence in a scene always leads to a series of hamfisted, pointlessly worthy sixth-form discussions about the Iraq war that are at least eight years too late.

Little Dotty Cotton

Nick Cotton's young daughter and would-be matricide accomplice. Technically Dotty has already left EastEnders, but it was an open-ended goodbye and she's free to return whenever she likes. This must not happen, simply because she gives me the willies more than anything else I've ever seen.

Now it's over to you. Which EastEnders characters would you do away with if you had the power? Let me know in the comments. First person to sniffily declare "all of them" wins my long-term admiration.